Smoke Screen
Through an inexplicable series of unwanted promotions, Trevor Barnett has become the lead spokesman for the tobacco industry just as it’s on the verge of extinction. Plaintiff’s attorneys have finally found the weakness they’d been searching for and filed a $200 billion lawsuit that the industry will be unable to appeal.
America’s tobacco companies react by doing the unthinkable—they close their plants and recall their product from retailer’s shelves. Trevor is charged with going on national television and making the announcement: Not another cigarette will be manufactured or sold until the industry is given ironclad protection from the courts.
As the economy falters and chaos takes hold, Trevor becomes the target of enraged smokers, gun-toting cigarette smugglers, and a government that has been cut off from one of its largest sources of revenue. Soon it becomes clear that this had always been his function—to take the brunt of the backlash and shield the men in power from the maelstrom they’d created.
Abandoned by his friends, his family, and the industry his own ancestors helped build, Trevor finds an unlikely ally in a beautiful anti-tobacco lobbyist who he’s secretly loved for years. Together they hatch a plan to fight back…
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Kyle Mills
I grew up in Oregon but have lived all over—D.C., Virginia, Maryland, London, Wyoming. My father was an FBI agent and I was a bureau kid, which is similar to being an army brat. You tend to spend your time with other bureau kids and get transferred around a lot, though I fared better on that front than many others.
One positive aspect of this lifestyle is that you can’t help but absorb an enormous amount about the FBI, CIA, Special Forces, etc. Like most young boys, I was endlessly fascinated with talk of chasing criminals and, of course, pictured it in the most romantic terms possible. Who would have thought that all this esoteric knowledge would end up being so useful?
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